It is very desirable to obtain medical imaging data with CT, MRI, PET, or other diagnostic imaging systems or any type of image capture system and then to permit persons to view remotely all the medical images without having to transmit the actual image files or allow the image files to actually download into the receiving viewing computer. Physicians for example, or other imaging users have a need to quickly access and analyze large numbers of image files from remote image capture systems securely, without downloading or storing the image files onto their computer. Present methods for this all rely on transmitting a medical image file to the viewer which is prohibitively slow and uses too much transmission bandwidth.
A present embodiment of the invention for remote image viewing is U.S. Pat. No. 5,432,714 to Novik; (1995) which discloses a system of compressing and transmitting data to be decompressed and viewed by an experienced or trained viewer, however, for medical diagnostic imaging, this system is unacceptably slow and costly compared to our inventive method and system. Our invention, the Remote Virtual Medical Diagnostic Imaging Viewer, allows a patient or physician or any other user needing secure remote image viewing, to easily view and manipulate the images and files over a wide area network like the Internet, but in a secure execution environment, without downloading the actual image files onto the hard drive of the viewer which is the method of prior art systems.
U.S. Pat. No. 4,682,869 to Itoh et al.; U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,870,497 and 4,979,049 to Chamzas et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 4,999,715 to Porcellio et al.; U.S. Pat. No. 5,166,987 to Kageyama; U.S. Pat. No. 5,189,526 to Sasson; and U.S. Pat. No. 5,204,756 to Chevion et al. show prior art systems. However, the prior art methods of image data transmission and remote image viewing, particularly when applied to medical diagnostic imaging, do not make use of our novel method of using an image storing application provider server to enable a remote secure executable environment, independent of the operating system of a viewing computer to temporarily reconstruct medical image files, rather than compressing, transmitting and then and uncompressing the actual medical image files interactively.
In our study of image data transmission techniques we have identified a need for a system that significantly decreases the time and cost of viewing images remotely for medical diagnostic analysis. Since accurate reproduction of an entire medical image file with all of the rest of the captured frames of image data is very necessary for medical diagnostic purposes. Our inventive method is unique because by it's nature, it is secure, saves time, is loss-less, and provides all the medical images available on the server to be viewed interactively, not just a few of the images as with prior art systems. Instead of lossy compression and file transmission systems described in prior art, our inventive method preserves remotely viewed image data in a secure environment.
With our inventive method, the image files are never actually downloaded onto the remote viewer. The remote viewer only displays an exact representation of the actual file stored on the application server. Images can be viewed over a wide area network like the Internet by logging into our website and using our invention.